Why Do Ordinary Sounds Sometimes Seem Haunting?

[Gale]

same thing happened with us and a vacuum cleaner. we were eating dinner upstairs, and the vacuum started up. we were all freaked out and dad went down stairs to check it out. on an unrelated note, my little brother saw a vampire in his closet that same night.

 

[Math Is Hard]

The back yard is all fenced off from the street and the neighbors. Someone would have to have climbed over the fence to do it, which seems kind of extravagant, though not impossible. I never found out the perpetrator.

hmmm...raccoons? Do they have enough dexterity to accidentally start up a sander?

 

[zoobyshoe]

same thing happened with us and a vacuum cleaner. we were eating dinner upstairs, and the vacuum started up. we were all freaked out and dad went down stairs to check it out. on an unrelated note, my little brother saw a vampire in his closet that same night.

Well, yeah, I saw a vampire out there , too, but I thought "Where's the connection? "

hmmm...raccoons? Do they have enough dexterity to accidentally start up a sander?

Yes. I'm sure one could have both reached and flipped the switch, but why wouldn't they have turned it off when they were done using it?

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think it depends somewhat on the atmosphere. At least for me. Where I work now I walk around the buildings at night without much of anyone around and it doesn't bother me at all.

You're talking about outdoors. It seems that being inside any building all alone is what's spooky. Appartement buildings are a fair balance of privacy and safety in numbers. There's a comfort to hearing the occasional noise from the people next door, or hearing people coming and going from the parking lot. It's no wonder Jack Torrence went mad at the Overlook Hotel: all those empty rooms and empty floors.

 

[AngelShare]

ew! I just got chills! I've had strange experiences like that. Especially at an office building I used to work at that was next to a cemetary (kind of a famous one, too. Marilyn Monroe and Natalie Wood were laid to rest there). The building was a really creepy place, and everyone had bizarre experiences there. I hated when I had to work alone on the weekends.

I volunteered at a library from 5PM to 8PM (closing time) and one of the women who worked there told me she thought it was creepy at night. My Mom and Gram said the same thing (My Pappy used to work there.). I found it comforting though.

However, one night, the same woman had to go upstairs to get something and asked me to come because she was too afraid to go on her own. We were about ready to go up the stairs when she said, "Oh wait...look at that." and turned towards the front door no one uses (The library used to be someone's home. Things were added on and, because of the positioning of the front desk and the original front door, another entrance was added and that one was locked since, when someone uses it, no one can seem them coming and going.). She pulled on the handle and found that the door was unlocked so, when we went upstairs, we had to search the rooms to see if anyone was hiding out.

That managed to freak me out a bit but, overall, I still don't find that place creepy.